Catherine the Great

In midsummer 1757, Catherine tried a different approach to appeasing her husband: she gave a party in his honor. For her garden at Oranienbaum, the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi designed and built a huge wooden cart capable of holding an orchestra of sixty musicians and singers. Catherine had poetic verses written and set to music. She had lamps placed along the grand avenue of the garden, and then she screened off the avenue with an immense curtain behind which tables were set for supper.

At dusk, Peter and dozens of guests entered the garden and sat down. After the first course, the curtain concealing the illuminated grand avenue was raised. Approaching in the distance came the rolling orchestra on its giant cart, pulled by twenty oxen decorated with garlands. Dancers, male and female, performed beside the moving cart. “The weather was superb,” Catherine wrote, “and when the cart stopped, it happened by chance that the moon hung directly over it, a circumstance which produced a wonderful effect and astonished the whole company.” The diners jumped up from the table to see. Then the curtain dropped, and the guests returned to their seats for another course. A flourish of trumpets and cymbals announced an elaborate free lottery. On either side of the large curtain, a small curtain was raised, revealing brightly lit booths, with porcelain objects, flowers, ribbons, fans, combs, purses, gloves, sword knots, and other finery available. Once all of these items had been taken, dessert was served, and the company danced until six in the morning.

The party was a triumph. Peter and his entourage, including the Holsteiners, praised Catherine. In her Memoirs, she basked in her achievement. “The Grand Duchess is kindness itself,” she records people as saying. “She gave presents to everyone; she is charming; she smiled and took pleasure in making us all dance, eat, and make merry.”

“In short,” Catherine purred, “I was found to possess qualities which had not been recognized before, and I thereby disarmed my enemies. This had been my goal.”

In June 1757, a new French ambassador, the Marquis de l’Hôpital, had arrived in St. Petersburg. Versailles was well informed about Elizabeth’s illnesses and Catherine’s growing influence, and the marquis was advised to “please the empress, but at the same time to ingratiate himself at the young court.” When l’Hôpital paid his first ceremonial visit to the Summer Palace, it was Catherine who received him. She and her guest waited as long as possible for the empress to appear, but finally sat down together to supper and began the ball without her. It was during the White Nights, and the room had to be artificially darkened for guests to enjoy the full effect of the hundreds of candles. Finally, in the gentler light, Elizabeth appeared. Her face was still handsome, but her swollen legs did not permit her to dance. After a few words of greeting, she retired to the gallery and from there sadly watched the brilliant scene.

L’Hôpital then set about his mission of strengthening France’s ties with Russia. He began by pressing for Hanbury-Williams’s recall to England and Poniatowski’s return to Poland. He was warmly received by the Shuvalovs, but he was rebuffed at the young court. Peter had no sympathy for an enemy of Prussia, and Catherine remained linked to Bestuzhev, Hanbury-Williams, and Poniatowski. Unable to counteract the influence of these three, l’Hôpital reported to his government that attempts to influence the young court were useless. “The grand duke is as completely a Prussian as the grand duchess is an incorrigible Englishwoman,” he said.

Nevertheless, the French ambassador did manage to achieve a major goal: he succeeded in getting rid of his English diplomatic rival, Hanbury-Williams. He and his government pressed Elizabeth to force the recall of an envoy whose king, they pointed out, was now an ally of their mutual enemy, Frederick of Prussia. Elizabeth accepted this logic, and, in the summer of 1757, King George II was informed that his ambassador’s presence was no longer desired in St. Petersburg. Sir Charles was willing to leave; his liver was failing. But when the moment arrived, he was reluctant. In October 1757 he called on Catherine for the last time. “I love you as my father,” she told him. “I count myself happy to have been enabled to acquire your affection.” His health worsened. After a stormy passage down the Baltic, he arrived, debilitated, in Hamburg and was hurried by doctors to England. There the elegant, witty ambassador degenerated into an embittered invalid, and, a year later, he ended his life by suicide. King George II, perhaps feeling responsibility for scuttling the alliance that Sir Charles had worked to negotiate, ordered that he be buried in Westminster Abbey.

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Apraksin’s Retreat